David Daehnke

Washington, DC - Public health and environmental advocates are
calling on home improvement stores to stop selling a fertilizer made
from mining waste that is contaminated with arsenic. On Tuesday, 23
groups sent a letter to Home Depot, Lowes and Target asking them to
put the safety of their customers first, and stop selling a product
called Ironite.

Ironite is a fertilizer produced from the mine tailings of a proposed
Superfund site in Humboldt, Arizona and sold to consumers as a lawn
and garden fertilizer. Testing by government agencies has found levels
of arsenic high enough to classify the fertilizer as a hazardous
waste.

Although federal law requires that hazardous waste be disposed of in
regulated landfills, a legal loophole called the Bevill Exemption
excludes the mining industry.

"It's an outrage that the mining industry, through legal loopholes,
can dispose of its toxic mine waste by selling it to unwitting
gardeners," said Bonnie Gestring of the Mineral Policy Center. "If
it's toxic enough for Superfund consideration, it doesn't belong in
anyone's vegetable garden."

A 1997 expose by "The Seattle Times" charged that many industries
dispose of their toxic waste by turning it into fertilizer. When the
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency compiled data on heavy metal
contamination of fertilizer, it found that Ironite contains - by a
wide margin - the highest levels of arsenic of all fertilizer products
surveyed. Ironite also contains high levels of lead.

Ironite has the potential to raise the amount of arsenic in lawns and
gardens. A soil scientist in Minnesota found that levels in his garden
rose to 100 parts per million after he applied Ironite - an amount 100
times background levels in that state.

"Arsenic and lead have no nutritional value to people or plants. They
don't belong in fertilizer, and they don't belong in our lawns and
gardens," said Jackie Hunt Christensen, co-director of the Food and
health Program at the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy.
"Retailers should make sure the products that they sell don't endanger
the health of their customers."

"State and federal agencies have known for years about the high
levels of arsenic in this product, and their failure to take action is
mind boggling," said Laurie Valeriano of the Washington Toxics
Coalition. "We need retailers like Home Depot to take matters into
their own hands and get this product off their shelves."

Other fertilizers besides Ironite also contain toxic waste. Retailers
can obtain information about the levels of heavy metals in fertilizers
at: http://www.wa.gov/agr/pmd/fertilizers/index.htm